t cattle would appear in the distance, then you would
think, 'No, it's a team of dogs broken loose and rushing towards you.' In
another moment one would be walking over the black dots of some old horse
droppings which had been the cause of the hallucinations. Since then I
have often been completely taken in by appearances under certain
conditions of light, and the novelty has worn off. Sastrugi are the hard
waves formed by wind on a snow surface; these are seldom more than a foot
or so in height, and often so obscured as to be imperceptible
irregularities. On this occasion they often appeared like immense ridges
until you walked over them. After going about 10 miles we spotted a tiny
black triangle in the dead white void ahead, it was over a mile away and
was the lunch camp of the dogs. We were fairly close before they broke
camp and hurriedly packed up. I thought they looked rather sheepish at
having been caught up, like the hare and the tortoise again. Still we had
been marching very quickly and Scott was delighted to see Weary Willie
going so well. They then dashed off, and after completing just over 12
miles we reached Pagoda Cairn where a bale of fodder had been left.

Here we camped and threw up our walls as quickly as possible to shelter
the beasts from the cold wind. Weary was the most annoying, he would
deliberately back into his wall and knock the whole structure down. In
the case of my own pony, I had to put the wall out of his reach as his
aim in life was to eat it, generally beginning at the bottom. He would
diligently dislodge a block, and bring down the whole fabric. One cannot
be angry with the silly beggars--Titus says a horse has practically no
reasoning power, the thing to do is simply to throw up another wall and
keep on at it.

The weather cleared during the night, and the next day, February 19, we
started off under ideal conditions, the sun was already dipping pretty
low, marks easy to pick up, and on this occasion we could plainly see a
cairn over seven miles away, raised by the mirage; the only trouble about
seeing things so far off is that they take such an awful time to reach.
Mirage is a great feature down here and one of the most common of optical
phenomena on the Barrier; it is often difficult to persuade oneself that
open water does not lie ahead. We passed the scene of Weary Willie's
fight with the dogs during the march and also had an amusing argument as
to a dark object on the snow ahead